


Shifters

by RegalBeast



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Introduction, Gen, Original Character(s), world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27786730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RegalBeast/pseuds/RegalBeast
Summary: Bernadetta is a young member of a dying breed, a shapeshifter. She's spent her life hidden with an adoptive family in a protective farming town at the fringe of the Achadian Kingdom, a territory that spent the last age trying to eradicate her kind from within it's borders. The young man she fancies doesn't seem the type to be hunting her, but trust is hard earned and he's keeping his own secrets.





	Shifters

“Detta, I know you already know this, being so wise and old for your twenty years, but you’re the love of my life!” Swooned off the lips of a green eyed boy hardly decorated. His pants were simple, tight and leather that clung up his hips and his shirt a stained grey affair that flowed wildly with the pace of their twirling on the tavern’s dancefloor. He grinned like a madman as she giggled and twirled herself away from him, a mesmerizing flutter of her white and red skirt trailing along from the momentum of her bare feet.

He wasn’t the one. He had the eyes but he didn’t have the mischief, or the utter charisma to be the one she usually met with on storm nights. Not that she could complain about a flattering dancer keeping up with her, he just wasn’t  _ her  _ flattering dancer that kept up with her. She didn’t let that affect her work of course, knowing the barmaids would take her hide if she didn’t use her boundless energy and tirelessly calloused feet to entertain the men until they were too dazed and bemused to be lecherous.

That was her job on the late ends of the week, when the tired foot patrolmen made their long walks home for leave from duty the inns of small farm towns like hers would employ a pretty unmarried dancer. Just a girl that would fit in the mesmyr skirt and could tell when she needed to twirl or dodge out of reach. It wasn’t hard work for the light footed Detta, but it came with risks so it paid well. It helped feed her mum and her sister, therefore none could talk her out of doing it, or convince her it was bawdy work for a girl her age.

“Dance with me next!” Her next caller, and she bounded to him with gusto. He was thin, almost delicate for a man, but his eyes were wild under his black hair and his pants were looser than the last one. When she wrapped both hands around his to pull him onto the raised stage she was surprised at how heavy and wiry he was, springy too!

So she called for a jig with a mirthy lilt in her voice and they traded wiry toes and laughter. Their little tap routine got the whole tavern giggling, with her too fast hops and twirls overwhelming the boy until he was a soft smile and a swaying thing for her to flounce her skirt and shimmy her shoulders at. She bumped him playfully off the stage with a hip when he couldn’t keep pace, falling into an idle sway as the crowd was early to getting far too hazy to give her another partner.

“Fine work you’ve done there, keeping them so caught up in the motion.” A voice as svelte and dangerous as any mountain cat she’d ever seen slink down through the pastures curled past her ear. “Did you save me a dance?”

She wasn’t going to look at him, she was still upset at how he’d left the last dance. But she lifted her chin, averted her eyes and made a gesture at the pianist while she gathered up her skirt in the other hand. She took flight on the angry pandering of a tango, shimmying away from her late suitor with no falter in her footing and no look back to answer him.

The dumbfounded looks on the barmaidens’ faces told her that he took the bait without a pause. She knew he’d fake his offense, look for her to be pouting for his attention. And when she didn’t she felt his boots pace the stage over, sure that only she could feel the weight of his walk as he made himself look as light as her skirt. Not even a peek did she offer him!

He wrapped his hand around her waist, and with a lightness befitting gossamer he trailed his palm along the uprising of her thigh, fabric keeping the intimacy of the wordless way she fell into him from being too much for the men drinking. It made the maidens fluster to see that she still kept her chin high and her expression sassy even as her hands fell onto his shoulders.

“I didn’t mean to leave you like I did the last time, darling.” Purred against her neck before they broke apart again, a whirl of her skirt and her unruly black curls after he’d plucked the ribbon out of her uptight bun. She swung around to face him for that, yellow eyes alight and her expression furious as he trailed the ribbon along with the next shuffle the tango demanded.

Instead of speaking she switched the dance, a delicate repositioning of her feet and the musician transitioned to a paced ambient beat, letting her slip right up to him with that glare and get her hand on her ribbon. She really hated how the violet heat of his magic flickered through his green eyes, how perfect his teeth were when he smiled at her fury, and how utterly, terribly neat his own Achadian curls were as they fell from his own ribboned tail and down his broad shoulders. So in fair trade she snatched his ribbon while he was distracted, releasing his hair and swinging herself by the leverage of her own so he wouldn’t grab it back. 

He almost looked like the prince when she did that, let his hair down. His pristine linen shirt pressed and billowing over his pale skin, his formal fabric trousers a mockery of the peasant leather and stained wool she was used to. Actually his entire frame was a mockery to the dancers she was used to, tight wound from jaw to narrow waist and with a stature that loomed rather than lurked.

Detta stopped, and the music with her as she extended the ribbon she’d taken, offering it to him while she panted to catch her breath. “Excuse me, that was petty of me. Shall we trade them back?”

In all fairness, he seemed just as stricken looking at her when she had finally turned to look at him. She always had the yellow eyes, and he’d always known she was guarded by a powerful magical seal. But recognizing just what the endless source of her energy was left him fully dumbfounded. “Yes. You need to put this back on, quickly.”

She quirked a brow in incredulous question, but whatever got her mother’s gift back in her hair she supposed. The pause to rebind their hair only took them each a moment, and they both refitted feigned smiles onto faces that had softened and dulled under enchantment. The rest of the dance was awkwardly lively, the patrolmen rejuvenated by the sight of them disenchanted. Eventually they settled them down enough that they could stagger off the stage and find seats to rest, questions waiting on dry tongues when the Barmaid came with drink and pay for Detta, ever protective.

“It’s alright Miss Drune, he won’t do it again.” She managed after a few sips of the applejuice she’d been brought. “Is this from Mama’s orchard?”

“Sure is darlin’. And he i’nt so he can get on back to where he came from.” Stalwart in how she posted beside the exhausted dancer, as if the man wasn’t equally wilted after calming the crowd with her. “We only have one encha’ment here ‘n its our pretty Detta. Now move. On. Sir.”

“Miss Drune, he didn’t mean anything by it.” A gentle hand on the matronly woman’s arm, and those yellow eyes soft when she looked up to her, “Mama is sleeping and Ana is too, I’ll be here the rest of the night where you don't need to worry about me. Let me keep him for company, please?”

“I’ll be watchin’ him Detta. Iun like his type, too pretty, hidin’ thin’s.” The woman was putty to the girl, sympathizing with how sweet she was not to run home and wake her family with such a late night of work. “When ye bore of ‘im ye room is done up, hear? Don’ be runnin’ off with ‘im.” And with a sordid glare at the boy the innkeeper went off to make good on her promise of a bed prepared for the dancer.

“They… know what you look like under that spell here.” He kept his voice level and spoke only after the Matron was safely henning someone else behind the bar across the room. He wasn’t sure how to ask her if she knew what she was to have skin that held light like dark pearls and eyes that illuminated from just the dim of a torch. Neither was he certain how to ask why an entire town of apparently charming farm folk was set on protecting her.

“I was raised here, of course they know what I look like. It’s magicians like you I have to worry about when I’m seen.” She continued to nurse her juice as she studied him with those dulled yellow eyes, so unlike the resplendent citrine he’d seen just moments ago, too dark in comparison. She was wearing a spell that only a master could have crafted. None of this was anything she knew by the way she acted.

“Do uh…. Do you know what you look like?” Pressed softly, not bold enough to tell her if she didn’t. Clearly taken with the image though.

“Sunrise, dawn on water. I think the bards have made it pretty clear I look like a dream they had about the sky falling into my mother’s womb the morning after I was made. There’s songs about me, they even sing them in the royal palace, Mama says.” Her tone was catty and unimpressed with these comparisons it seemed. The man across from her looked like he’d just experienced a sudden and religious rebirth in his seat.

“Oh. Those songs are about the last known Aphaletis.” He said it dull and without his usual easy charisma as she stared at him quietly and seemed to wait to hear something she didn’t know from working in a tavern of all places. "A shapeshifter family, they were the most obvious of any shapeshifters at rest so they supposedly went deep into hiding within Achadia centuries ago. They were the prize, next to Fafhir beasts.”

“And if I was one of those, which I’m not, I would want it known?” Cheeky and dry at his reminder that Shifters so often found themselves hunted as prize.

“Probably not, no.” Just dry, his face a grimace of recognition that he'd spoke like an ass.

“We all have our own problems, Princey. Ribbons can be a quick solution, discretion can be a lasting one.” Her tone was poignant at the last note, and he saw how defensive she became as she studied him for a reaction. Almost scared, he could sense that her looks had been the cause of mayhem she felt responsible for in how she hid behind her juice mug.

“Discretion, got it. Don’t bring up the ribbon thing, I can handle that.” He chattered amicable and awkward and rubbed his thumb at his own ribbon, pausing when it registered what she’d called him, “Wait.”

“At your righteous dainty toes, _my Lord._ ” 

“Alright, we all have secrets we need to keep, I get that! I won’t press!”

“Good. Buy something to drink after all that dancing. I’m going to bed, my Mama will want me home early.” And with that she got up and left him to stew with his wondering if she was a fully capable creature of legends or not.


End file.
